Adjusting tone and color for video

When it comes to capturing video, it's really no different from a still capture, in terms of achieving an accurate exposure and color values within the scene. Of course, with video, that can be a little bit trickier because you might need to record over a period of time. And of course, the subject in front of the camera might change a bit over time. That can certainly effect your exposure readings. And you might not necessarily have the opportunity to review color for example or it might be difficult if you're out under daylight conditions reviewing the LCD can be little bit of challenge. Sufficive to say while capturing video clips is in many ways similar to capturing still images.

There are unique challenges, and there's going to be times when you need to apply adjustments to video clips just as you do with still captures. In the Library module we have the Quick Develop option. And here we're able to apply some basic adjustments to our videos. That means that we can actually adjust the overall tone and color in our video clips using Lightroom. And those changes will be applicable when we export and share the video for example. For this video clip you can see that I have waves crashing on the beach, but things are little bit dark. We could use a little bit more brightness and its a fairly cool we would like a little bit more yellow in the frame I would say. And so, we're going to apply some adjustments using the Quick Develop settings.

I'll start off with our Overall Tonal Control. I'll expand the Tone Control Adjustments, so that we can see more of those options. In fact, I'm going to hide the Histogram, for the moment, so that I can see more of these controls. Now keep in mind that we're making our adjustment, based on what we see on the screen at this moment. And so you may want to use the Scrubby slider, in order to find a more typical frame within the overall video clip. So perhaps, maybe somewhere over in here looks to be a little more typical of the overall scene, so we'll use this as the basis of our adjustments. I'll start off with an Exposure adjustment just to brighten up the overall video.

I can also adjust the Whites and the Blacks. Now notice that we're using buttons rather than sliders to apply these adjustments. That's just how the Quick Develop options work. I also want to adjust the color. So for white balance, I'll go ahead and increase the Temperature. And I'll click the Double Right Arrow button, that will give me a larger adjustment than the Single Arrow buttons. And then I can fine-tune using both the left and right adjustments to try to find the right color within this particular video clip.

I can also fine-tune the overall tonality. So perhaps I'll increase contrast just a little bit, increase exposure a little more and then I can review the overall video. For example, moving to the left here, things look a little bit too warm. I'll go further over to the left toward the beginning. And that looks still a little bit too warm. So I'll adjust the Temperature and perhaps fine-tune the tint here. I think maybe a little bit more magenta in this case might be helpful. I'll then start from the beginning and click the Play button, so that I can review the video clip. And that's certainly an improvement, still a little bit of work to be done. I might add some contrast, for example, and I might also further refine the color temperature.

You can see that portions of the video do look a little bit over exposed, so I'll have to try to balance out my adjustments as much as possible to ensure the best, final result. But you can see that we're able to use the relatively basic controls found in the Quick Develop section of the right panel in the Library module in order to improve the overall color and tonal appearance of our video clips. And that includes, by the way, the Vibrance adjustment that allows us to boost the Saturation of colors within the photo.

So working with all of the available controls you can really improve the overall look for your video clips.

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Released

7/4/2012

As the line between still cameras and video cameras becomes increasingly blurred, so does the line between photographic and video editing software. For example, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 includes simple but powerful video capabilities, and in this course Tim Grey shows you how to use them to manage, optimize, and share your video clips, right alongside your still photos. Learn how to import and review video, edit and optimize your clips, and then share your finished product with others—all directly from within Lightroom.